TEANSACTIONS OF SECTION A. 77 



however, the strong resemblance between the two wmds. The 

 barometer falls in England as the south-west wind approaches ; 

 the thermometer rises in the south-east or right side of the 

 cyclonic path, and, as the storm progresses, the wind gradually 

 veers to the west, and eventually into the bracing north-west. 

 Abercrombie explains these phenomena as being the marks of 

 a V depression formed either along the south prolongation 

 of the trough of a cyclone, or else in the col between two 

 adjacent anticyclones. If this be so, and our north-west, 

 followed by south-west, storms (or some of them) be similar 

 in origin, we experience imder their influence the result of a 

 V depression formed along the northern prolongations of the 

 troughs of cyclones passing away to the south-east. When 

 pouring rain comes from the south-west after a north-west 

 wind of long or short continuance, we are, indeed, forcibly 

 reminded of the "southerly bursters" of Australia, which also, 

 it appears, are owing to a V depression passing to the south- 

 eastward along the southern coasts of that island, the point 

 of the Y being to the north, witli the wind north in front, and 

 south-west or south in rear. TIae phenomena of our north- 

 west weather, although possessing a general similarity, are, it 

 must be remembered, of various types, and some of these types 

 may be explicable in the above fashion. The arch is sometimes 

 absent altogether ; the increase of temperature varies consider- 

 ably ; so does the duration of the storm, and the character of 

 the south-west wind which supervenes ; and therefore we can 

 readily understand that, with somewhat similar north-west 

 weather, the same fundamental shape of isobar will not always 

 be found. 



Mr. Cockburn Hood and Mr. Charles Knight (Trans. N.Z. 

 Inst., vol. vii.) think our north-west winds are simply the 

 hot winds of Australia which mount high into the atmosphere 

 after leaving that island-continent, and gather moisture from 

 the intervening sea. But surely there is a fallacy here. A 

 high upper wind would not lick up moisture, and, if it did, it 

 could not hold it for a journey of 1,200 miles, because of the 

 low temperature it would acquire at its elevation. Sometimes, 

 truly, as on "Black Thursday," the north-west weather of 

 Australia may reach as far as New Zealand, for general 

 weather is occasionally very widespread in its influence, as 

 was evidenced quite recently (9th and 10th September, 1889) 

 when the ship " Otago," two or three thousand miles to the 

 south-east of New Zealand, nearly succumbed to the same 

 succession of north-west followed by south-w^est cyclones as 

 swept at that time over this colony. There is also such great 

 •similarity in some respects between the hot winds of AustraHa 

 — blowing for two or three days together with excessive heat 

 and violence from the north-west, and followed as they are 



